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Pro ultimate team coming to Toronto

Professional ultimate is coming to Toronto as the city gets an American Ultimate Disc League expansion team in 2013.

Harrison Schwarzer, left, and Travis Martin stretch into the air for an ultimate Frisbee as they practise a layout drill on a soggy patch of grass at Rice University in November 2010, in Houston. (Michael Paulsen / Associated Press file photo)

By Josh TapperStaff Reporter

Fri., June 22, 2012

Last April, Rob Lloyd and his son, Mark, were breakfasting along the harbourfront in Santa Cruz, Calif., when talk turned to Mark’s passions and future goals, a certifiably frustrating conversation for any father and his 22-year-old.

Mark’s answer would have thrown many dads for a loop: The recent Western University graduate wanted to play competitive ultimate — also known as ultimate Frisbee — a sport and infatuation that had taken him across the continent with an elite Toronto club team called GOAT and to the 2012 U-23 Ultimate Championships in Florence, Italy.

Where other parents might have shuddered, Lloyd, a Winnipeg-bred Cisco Systems executive vice-president, saw an opportunity.

“Why don’t we start a professional team?” he asked, unfazed.

The genesis of the Toronto Rush was as simple as that. Two months later, the Lloyds are backing the city’s first-ever professional ultimate team, with plans to suit up in spring 2013.

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The Rush will join the fledgling American Ultimate Disc League as part of an eight-team expansion that will also see squads land in Washington D.C., New York, Boston and other East Coast ultimate hotbeds.

Currently in its first season, the league’s eight teams, scattered from Buffalo, N.Y., to Lexington, Ky., play a 16-game schedule, all charging $10 or less for a single game ticket. League founder and commissioner Josh Moore said expansion teams needed about $10,000 to buy into the league. He envisions the league surpassing lacrosse in popularity and renown in the next five years.

A lofty goal, perhaps, but not at all farfetched.

With more than 5 million men and women players across North America — roughly 10,000 are believed to be in Toronto, which hosts the 2013 U-23 World Championships at York University — ultimate has blossomed from its laid-back 1960s beginnings as a kooky fringe sport to near ubiquity, visible on countless university campuses and even ESPN highlight reels.

Jason Robinson, general manager of the 3,500-member Toronto Ultimate Club, the city’s largest, argues ultimate’s existing popularity does not preclude the need for professional teams, which inevitably come with big-boy business models and profit margins.

“A professional team can perhaps give a sport credibility or increase its public awareness,” he said. “The prospect of having a pro team in Toronto is not detrimental (to ultimate) in anyway, and I’d be hopeful it might potentially garner interest in the sport a little more.”

Played seven-on-seven, ultimate blends the furious back-and-forth momentum of lacrosse with the strategic passing and end zone goal scoring of football. The sport at times seems acrobatic, as players use a grab-bag of throws, such as hammers and scoobers, flinging a disc down a football-size field.

Lloyd said he was “blown away” by the non-contact sport’s high-speed pace and athleticism when he first saw it played four years ago. “It makes baseball look very sluggish,” he said.

With the Rush — named for the legendary Toronto rock band — still in early development, Lloyd, 56, said a logo, design and management team won’t be determined until August. Even then, the club must hold tryouts and settle on a venue. The University of Toronto’s Varsity Stadium topped a list of ideal home fields, according to surveys of Toronto’s ultimate community undertaken by the Lloyds.

The Lloyds plan to offer youth training camps for Rush fans and ensure game tickets are less than $10. As for the players, travel and expenses will be covered. Still, forget about salaries (there aren’t any) — the Rush is about exposure.

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